Acme – …To Reduce The Choir To One Soloist (1996)

This thing doesn’t play nice. Acme’s …To Reduce the Choir to One Soloist, just out on Edison Records, isn’t here to win over the crowd. It’s here to annihilate it. This record is a bomb—detonated and still ringing in your ears days after you drop the needle. It’s violent, raw, and intentionally ugly, like a scorched-earth rejection of everything watered-down in mid-’90s hardcore.

Acme crawled out of Bremen, Germany—same cold industrial city that gave us the equally devastating Systral and Carol—and they’ve carved out their own jagged space in the scene. Bremen’s been putting out some of the most intense, apocalyptic hardcore coming out of Europe right now, and Acme might be the sharpest edge in that arsenal. Where a lot of bands in this space flirt with metal or collapse into crust clichés, Acme take the blueprint of emotional hardcore and drag it through broken glass.

The sound is pure chaos, but never without control. Guitars are shrill and metallic, never settling into a groove—just wave after wave of distortion and collapse. The drums sound like they’re being played with bricks—tight, fast, punishing—but always locked in. The bass rumbles like an earthquake underneath it all, and the vocals? They’re buried in the mix, distorted and desperate, like someone screaming through a wall. You won’t catch every word, but you’ll feel every second of it.

Still, for those who dig deep, there’s substance under all the sonic wreckage. “Blind” is a fucking monster—starts like it’s already mid-collapse and builds to a punishing climax that’s part condemnation, part catharsis. “Repress” follows that same energy—pure tension, no release. Lyrically, this record deals with internal collapse and political frustration, but it never gets preachy or predictable. These songs feel personal and pissed, and that’s exactly the point.

The production’s as raw as the music deserves—don’t expect clean lines or shiny mixes. This thing sounds like it was recorded live in a concrete basement, and that only adds to the impact. There’s a grime and weight to it that would’ve been lost if it was too clean. Every crackle, every overdriven riff, every clipped scream—it’s all part of the atmosphere. You don’t polish a shotgun blast.

We’re at a weird crossroads in hardcore right now—too many bands playing it safe, dipping into posturing or metal-for-the-sake-of-metal. Acme doesn’t give a shit about any of that. They sound like they’re playing like it’s the last thing they’ll ever do. And maybe it is—who knows how long they’ll stick around. But this record will leave a crater in its wake.

If you’re into Unruh, early Integrity, or the heavier side of what Ebullition’s putting out right now, you need this. If you’re not ready to be completely leveled, walk away. Acme isn’t for tourists. This is hardcore at its most intense—no compromise, no escape. Total devastation.